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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Wilson describe the difference between gifted and less-gifted artists' brains?

2. Which ocean is still experiencing increasing yields?

3. Who does Wilson offer as evidence of thinkers affected by the concept of natural rights?

4. What do the arts need science for?

5. What will the combination of the arts and sciences ultimately create?

Short Essay Questions

1. What is the purpose of the social sciences, and how does Wilson distinguish the social sciences from the physical social sciences?

2. What is volitional evolution, and what does Wilson say are its effects?

3. In what way are epi-genetic rules cross-cultural?

4. How do social factors influence genetic distribution?

5. What threats to contemporary culture does Wilson describe, and how is consilience useful in answering them?

6. What is the consilient view of religious ethics?

7. What ethical perspective does Wilson call the empiricist view?

8. What are the two branches of anthropology Wilson describes, and what question does he say they both fail to answer?

9. What ethical perspective does Wilson call the Transcendental view?

10. What does Wilson say the liberal arts should address?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

What is the difference between consilience and wisdom?

Essay Topic 2

What difference is there between how individuals experience consilience and how societies experience consilience? Is the best audience for 'Consilience' really a society, or are there uses for consilience in individual lives? Who do you have to be to 'use' consilience? Who is Wilson's audience?

Essay Topic 3

Is consilience possible, and if so, who would practice it? Is it necessarily communal? In our modern circumstance of specialized research and analysis, can one person--can one panel of people contain and unify all knowledge? Is Wilson arguing for the unification of knowledge, or just better networks and communication between disciplines?

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